Category Archives: Ceramics/Clay

Post by Dianna Woolsey, PSU graduate student In my previous post, I described the unusual clay figurines that have been found in the Lower Columbia: simple incised anthropomorphic tablets, and finely-sculptured zoomorphic items described as pipe bowls or club heads. Neither of these artifact types seems to resemble the clay objects reported from other areas […]

Post by Dianna Woolsey, PSU graduate student Continuing our repository visits for the PNW Clay and Pottery Project, Shelby and I recently visited the Burke Museum in Seattle to look at their collections of clay artifacts from Western Washington. The collection was very different from what we saw in the University of Oregon repository earlier in […]

I just got home from Anchorage, Alaska, where I spent the last few days at the Alaska Anthropological Association Meetings. I presented a paper on my work with northern ceramics as part of the Cape Espenberg Session. I focused on the challenges specific to studying northern ceramics, including methodological issues, environmental constraints, and mobility issues […]

Post by Dianna Woolsey, PSU Graduate Student and PNW clay/pottery project Research Assistant Last month Shelby posted about the remarkable spread of clay ball artifacts in both prehistoric and historic contexts, and the spread just keeps on spreading. Two weeks ago I went to Lewis and Clark National Park in Astoria as part of our continuing research […]

Post by Nikita Collier, PSU undergraduate and Archaeology Lab Intern Temper is material that is added to clay that changes the properties of ceramics as they are fired, preventing rapid shrinkage or expansion. Temper also helps the clay heat evenly, which prevents cracking and breakage. All of the materials in the bags were collected from […]

Last week I was the the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History to do some research for my PNW clay and ceramic technology project. The goal was to look through the museum’s archival materials to identify sites where clay and/or ceramic features, objects, or vessels were reported. I also finally had a […]

Thanks to Tim Rast for interviewing me about my work – over on the Elfshot Blog, one of my favorite archaeology sites. Tim also made a bunch of reproductions for our Cape Krusenstern education kits last year. He wrote about some of his work on our reproductions here and here, just to name a few posts […]